In a day and age when people want things now, Bobby Hauck understands the frustration of his fan base. Then again, those who cheer for the UNLV football team haven't had much to get excited about in a long time.

Progress is there, the Rebels insist, just maybe not in heaping spoonfuls.

They opened the season with three straight losses in 2012, the first two by a field goal, the last by eight points, then proceeded to beat Air Force. Then in typical fashion, closed the season at 2-11, 2-6 in the Mountain West.

"Slow progress is better than no progress," running back Tim Cornett said. "In 2011, those games wouldn't have been 3, 3, 8. They would have been 13, 13, 24. I feel like we're making progress as a team, and next year, I feel like we will win that game by three points. We'll win the next one by three and the third one by eight."

The Rebels are a confident bunch, even if the recent run of the program isn't exactly a launching pad for it. They have 19 returning starters, and that translates to game experience.

"I think our guys are pretty confident that we've got a solid football team," Hauck said. "I think the coaching staff's that way. I think our guys have the knowledge that we can compete with the teams in our conference in particular, and we're going to have our chances to get the job done. We'll have a chance to have a good team."

Las Vegas is all about chances, and linebacker Tim Hasson knows the city deserves a winning football team. As the leading returning tackler on the team (76 stops, five for a loss), the senior thinks this year's group is ready to deliver on the promise.

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"I feel like we've got a lot of experience coming back, and that's the main thing," he said. "A lot of people played, and people aren't going into the games kind of nervous. Everybody has been in there before. Everybody knows what their weaknesses were, and everybody has been working on them this offseason to have better results. Experience is the main thing I feel is going to take us to that next step."

Naturally, some have to grow up quicker than others. While Cornett was rushing for 1,232 yards last year, the passing game was slow to keep up the pace. Nick Sherry played as a freshman, and while he threw for 2,544 yards and 16 touchdowns, he threw 17 passes to the opposition and missed his receivers way too often (53.1 completion percentage).

It was the type of growing pains many in the program have gone through themselves as the team ranked in the bottom half in the country in every major statistical category.

All that losing is in the past. Cornett said a change is brewing in the attitude, and Hauck said he's seen it. Instead of wanting to be good on game day, he said the signs are there the Rebels are trying to prove they can do it year round.

"(It's) The want to. You can have all the talent in the world, all the maturity, but when your team wants to win, that's when you'll win," Cornett said. "You've got to want it. You've got to hate losing more than you love winning, and I feel that's how our team has grown. That's what we're getting to."

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